It is hard to think of any area of our lives that might not one day be affected by artificial intelligence, and an exponential rise in recent years has already seen it become increasingly embedded in healthcare. After an early focus on supercharging the way in which new drugs can be discovered, AI is now empowering healthcare improvements in diagnosis and patient care. Across these themes we see many exciting technological advances that are changing our conception of how healthcare is delivered as the capabilities of smartphones and sensors continue to increase and improve. By putting a compact, portable computer in our hands, smartphones have already enabled huge changes in our lives over the last decade or so. Now, as artificial intelligence comes of age, smartphones and other mobile devices are becoming cleverer still.

Creativity is thought of as a uniquely human trait, born from our conscious observations and interpretations of ourselves and the world around us-- in that sense, it's not something machines should ever be capable of. Nonetheless, few would doubt the'left-brain' potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its ability to paw through massive datasets-- extracting insights, predictions, and patterns, all of which can then inform a program's next action as a result, and enable technology to serve as our digital assistant. While we may not always know clearly how it's making decisions, we can be relatively sure those choices are driven by logic. It's not to say current uses of AI are exclusive from creative industries or art. For example, AI can comb through banks of historical, creative data and generate new content, based on a patchwork of previous data and an'understanding' of average formats.

Latitude 44, a conference that shone the spotlight on key players in the technology world from Estonia and Canada, took place in Toronto on November 14 and 15. "Estonia's digital transformation continues as it persists to be a free and open digital society. Estonia seeks to be a champion of the free movement of data and a supporter of the use of technology in a way that does not require significant restrictions on our rights." "We are in a period of incredible growth. I have been in the business for 30 years and I've never seen it like this." Bruce Croxon, partner at Round13 Capital and TV Host, The Disruptors, Toronto "Estonia has a very startup friendly business environment for entering into the European market. We offer e-residency so that entrepreneurs can do business remotely using Estonian e-services and we now have 65,000 new e-residents and 7,000 companies."

One of the anxieties plaguing the work force as we enter the next decade is the fear of automation replacing blue collar jobs. At the forefront of these anxieties is artificial intelligence (AI). The discussion is even such a hot-pressed issue that American Democratic candidate Andrew Yang's argument for a universal basic income policy is riding on its ability to speak to middle-American manual labour workers. However, for a lot of consumers around the world, the thought of automation can be exciting -- such as letting a Tesla drive you hands free down the freeway on a long trip. But this doesn't create an exception for those that are worried their jobs will be replaced by an automated crane or self-driven truck.

This event will be highly interactive. Dr Suzanne Little will give a short talk followed by group break-out sessions to discuss the topic in more depth. About the speaker: Dr Suzanne Little is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer at the School of Computing, Dublin City University and SFI Principal Investigator, Insight Centre for Data Analytics. Before moving to the School of Computing at DCU in 2015, Suzanne was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics at DCU. Suzanne originally joined the CLARITY research centre at Dublin City University in February 2012 and was principally responsible for the SAVASA project (Standards based Approach to Video Archive Search and Analysis). In 2013, CLARITY evolved to become Insight where Suzanne worked on and managed a number of projects in video analytics, motion analysis and data collection.

YOKOHAMA – Nissan Motor Co. said Thursday it will invest ¥33 billion ($301 million) to introduce advanced manufacturing technology at a plant in Japan to tackle the challenges of producing next-generation vehicles such as electric, intelligent and connected cars. Nissan plans to introduce the manufacturing technology at its factories around the world, including those of alliance partners Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., following the initial investment at its plant in Tochigi Prefecture in 2020. "A leap in Nissan's production technology will be key in enhancing our (overall) technology as vehicles become more complex and advanced," Nissan Executive Vice President Hideyuki Sakamoto told a news conference at the automaker's headquarters in Yokohama. The new system involves automated pallets that mount entire powertrains, whereas assembly line staff currently install multiple components, such as batteries and motors, in sequence. Such universal pallets will enable Nissan to assemble different types of vehicles, whether electric or gasoline-powered, in one process, the company said.

Researchers at Oxford University have recently tried to recreate human thinking patterns in machines, using a language guided imagination (LGI) network. Their method, outlined in a paper pre-published on arXiv, could inform the development of artificial intelligence that is capable of human-like thinking, which entails a goal-directed flow of mental ideas guided by language. Human thinking generally requires the brain to understand a particular language expression and use it to organize the flow of ideas in the mind. For instance, if a person leaving her house realizes that it's raining, she might internally say, "If I get an umbrella, I might avoid getting wet," and then decide to pick up an umbrella on the way out. As this thought goes through her mind, however, she will automatically know what the visual input (i.e.

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, announces that his company will draft its own set of laws to regulate the use of facial recognition. The best way to have the law on your side is to create it. Maybe that's what Jeff Bezos thought. As part of the annual event dedicated to its virtual assistant Alexa, Amazon's CEO has just announced that his company will develop a set of laws to regulate facial recognition technology. This draft legislation will then be proposed to U.S. federal legislators.

Humans have been building machines to separate waste into different streams of different value requiring differing processes for decades. Until recently, we were mostly failing to do it well enough to be worth the investment. Instead, millions of people globally manually sort trash, sometimes with developed country workplace safety standards, sometimes living in developing country trash fields and scraping a living out of them. In London in the 1850s, when the population was roughly 3 million, a thousand rag and bone men plied their trade, greasy bags over their shoulders or slung on rough carts, picking through the detritus of the city to find enough items of value to allow them to pay for their lodging and food. In 1988, the World Bank estimated that 1-2% of the global population made most or all of its living picking through waste.

The Next Biennial Should Be Curated by a Machine A proposition for an intelligent system capable of curating otherwise www.biennial.com The Next Biennial Should be Curated by a Machine is an inquiry into the relationship between curating and artificial intelligence, and a possibility of developing an experimental system capable of curating, based on human-machine learning principles. Unfolding as a series of machine learning experiments, the project is a collaboration between artists UBERMORGEN, digital humanist Leonardo Impett, and curator Joasia Krysa. The first online experiment will be launched at Liverpool Biennial 2020 and is co-commissioned by Liverpool Biennial and the Whitney Museum of American Art for its online gallery space artport. Making reference to'The Next Documenta Should Be Curated by an Artist' (e-flux, 2003),* this project extends the proposition to machines.